


Worth

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, a little romance, ahhhh, my first works - totally not freaking out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:45:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10107203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: In which Jemma Simmons meets her best friend's mother, and some more things about him just fall into place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first work on here - so excited and so scared at the same time. I've already posted this on Tumblr so if you follow me over there you may have already seen it!! All mistakes are mine!

When Fitz and Simmons are both a few months away from graduating The Academy, Fitz brings his best friend home to meet his mum.

Of course, Jemma has seen Fitz’s mum before. She’s seen photographs of her and on various Skype calls and she knows a bit of her from the snippets of stories Fitz will tell her when they huddle in his room in the middle of the night, tired from studying and the munchies have run low. She knows that he is the absolute stereotypical son and worships the ground his mum walks on and that every Christmas she picks him up from Edinburgh Airport with a placard that says “my wonderful son” (and she also knows that he’s only around 80% embarrassed by that).

This time is different, however. This time, she is beside Fitz on the plane as it makes its turbulent descent into Edinburgh airport. This time she is there to see the happiness on his face as he spots his mum in the crowd with her placard in tow. And, this time, she is right there when her best friend feels comfortable enough to say, “Mum, meet Jemma Simmons. Biochemist.”

She politely extends a hand, but she obviously thought his mum was more like her son and so all the air is _oof_ ed out of her in surprise when the woman goes in for a hug, the edge of the placard digging into Jemma’s back slightly. “Hi, Jemma. I’m Linda. I don’t like bringing the car all the way through here so we’ll be taking the train back. It’s no that long a journey – I mean it’s _not_ that long a journey.” There’s an ever so slight pause before she grumbles, “well, that’s if bloody ScotRail are on time for once,” to Fitz who laughs awkwardly before quietly saying to Jemma:

“She’s got a thing about the abysmal state of ScotRail. She’ll probably mention it a few times on the train back – if you don’t comment when she says stuff she’ll eventually just leave it.”

“Good to know,” Jemma smiles, trying to put him at ease. The whole issue about the Scottish rail network seems rather funny to her rather than something to be embarrassed about.  “My gran grumbles about the underground in London – I doubt it’s just a Scottish thing, Fitz.”

He looks decidedly calmer, until, that is, his mum seems to properly notice him and throws herself around him, muttering, “Aw, my sweet, genius of a boy. Give your mum a hug. I’ve missed you so much!” And then she bursts into tears.

-x-

1 hour and 45 minutes later they arrive at Fitz’s mum’s home on the outskirts of Glasgow with only minor grumbling about ScotRail. ( _“I mean I just don’t get how they can just conveniently ‘run out of staff’ while we’re on the bloody train! Surely they’d know beforehand? If I don’t get a replacement ASAP someone will pay.”)_ It’s a modest little house; two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a small conservatory at the back.

It’s cute. It’s homely. And, to Jemma, a little piece of her best-friend’s puzzle falls into place.

“Here we are,” Linda sings, opening the door. “Welcome to home sweet home. It’s a bit of a mess – I’ve been a bit busy these past few days and I’ve not had a chance to put the messages away yet. I’m sorry,” she turns to Jemma, “it’s not usually like this.”

“Oh, do not worry about it, Mrs Fitz. Fitz’s room is always such a clutter at the Academy. Wrappers and clothes _everywhere._ ” She says it to be a joke, but it isn’t taken as one and Linda spins around on her heel to face her son.

“ _What?_ Leopold Fitz I raised you better than to leave dirty wrappers and clothes everywhere. For goodness sake. _Clothes?_ I didnae spend _two weeks_ teaching you how to use the bloody washing machine just so you could leave dirty clothes all over your room and embarrass me in America. I swear to God, boy, you’re actually gonnae be the death of me one of these days and then you’ll be sorry.” She rants as she walks into the house.

Fitz turns to Jemma and mutters, “Thanks for that one,” before following his mum into their home.

Jemma, who can’t believe that it took her genius engineer friend _two weeks_ to learn how to use a washing machine, just laughs and follows them with her suitcase.

-x-

Dinner time turns out to be more like question time as Jemma sits across from Fitz’s mum with Fitz beside her who complains every time his mum asks a question (in a more pronounced accent too, which she thinks rather suits him), to which she just responds, “Honey, I’m just trying to know a bit more about her. It’s hard to learn very much when all you can see is a blurry shadow on a wee screen six thousand miles away.”

It goes something like this:

“So, Jemma, tell me, where are you from?”

“Mum, for goodness sake, you don’t need to know where she’s from.”

“I’m from Sheffield, Mrs Fitz.”

“Aw, that’s nice. Don’t feel the need to call me ‘Mrs Fitz’ though. Linda is absolutely fine. So, tell me, what’s your favourite thing about the Academy?”

“Mum, seriously? What, are you composing a file on her or something?”

“Shut up, Leopold. I think – no, don’t give me that look, young man. I raised you and I’ll damn well call you Leopold if I damn well please. Sorry, Jemma, continue.”

Eventually it ends and once Fitz has been sent to do the washing up after the way he spoke to her at dinner ( _Aye, that’ll teach you no to backchat me again at the dinner table_ ) Linda and Jemma sit down in the living room with steaming mugs of tea and a plate of shortbread on the coffee table between them.

“It really is very nice to meet you in person,” Jemma says, taking a sip. “Your home is so nice and cosy. Especially with all of the pictures.” There are pictures all over the walls of Fitz from when he was a very tiny baby to a picture that Jemma assumes was taken mere minutes before he got on the plane to the US.

“Yes, I do like my photos,” Linda laughs. “It wasn’t always so warm and cosy here, though. Once it was such a cold place to come back to. I used to dread walking through the door when I was driving back from work.”

“Because of Mr Fitz?” Jemma asks gently. Fitz hasn’t told her much, but she knows enough to infer that this is the reason why Linda Fitz’s eyes have taken on a haunted look, and why she grips her cup of tea ever so slightly more tightly.

Her eyebrows go up. “I’m surprised he’s told you. Doesn’t tell anybody about his dad. I wouldn’t either, mind you. Och, Alec was a nasty piece of work. Has Fitz told you much?”

Jemma shakes her head. “No, not really. Only little bits and pieces. Things like his dad didn’t believe in him and didn’t think he was capable and kept on asking him to prove himself.”

Fitz’s mum snorts in disgust so hard that Jemma’s surprised she didn’t inhale her tea. “Understatement of the bloody century. Alec was always asking Leo to do things that were way beyond even him. Always making him prove himself. Leo would come home in primary one with a spelling certificate and be all happy to show his dad, and then Alec would ask him to spell about twenty different words – hard ones that even I couldn’t spell – before he’d say well done. It wasn’t in a jokey way, either, it was in a way that made Leo felt like he had to win a Nobel prize before his dad would say well done without making him prove his worth.”

She continues on. “Nothing was ever good enough for him. _Nothing._ Leo was so advanced, you know? So smart. He was doing primary five stuff in primary one, did first year stuff in primary three. Sat his highers early, did sixth year studies the year after. I tried to keep up with him, but it was only Alec that really understood the stuff he was interested in. But the snide comments and the put-downs and the constant verbal abuse that he subjected his son to just kept on coming and I couldn’t see the man I married anymore, I couldn’t see the Alexander Fitz I fell in love with – just this empty case of a man that I didn’t like anymore.

“It came to a head when I got the call from S.H.I.E.L.D saying that he was gifted. It was early January – Leo had just gone back to school after Christmas. We’d just had dinner and I got this phone call telling me that he was gifted and they wanted him to come to their prestigious Academy when he turned 16, so he’d be an adult. Imagine that! My son, the genius, being scouted out. I was fair away. So proud. I got off the phone and told them both about it. And Alec, want to know what he said? He scoffed and said ‘Gifted? At what?’ And no in that jokey way either that dads sometimes have – no this was pure dismissal. I sent Leo up to his room. Then I had it out with Alec.”

Fitz’s mum sniffs a little sadly. “Told him that he should be proud of his son, like what a normal father would be. I said to him that it wasn’t funny anymore and that I’d had enough and the next time he had something to say well he could just awa’ and bile his heid. Alec got angry.” She laughs with no humour. “So angry. Called me for everything. Told me he was just trying to build character but if I couldn’t handle that then fine. He’d leave me with my ‘precious, pure son who would grow into nothing’. Then he left. Didn’t take anything with him but his jacket. And that’s the last time I ever saw him.”

Jemma sits there quietly, not wanting to disturb the woman who is so far back in the past. “He sent me the divorce papers in the post. What a charmer, eh? I didn’t even care. Imagine saying that to your wee boy; imagine telling him all those years that he’d grow in to nothing. The joke’s on Alec – Leopold Fitz had made something wonderful of himself and no thanks to that rotten bastard of a dad. I wouldn’t change my boy for the world – well, maybe except for doing more of the washing. That could be something I could live with changing.”

She stands up out of the chair and comes over to Jemma, motioning for the empty cup in Jemma’s hands – the tea which she has no recollection of finishing. “I’m glad he has you. You’ll remind him that he’s worth something, that he is capable of so much more than what his dad every told him he was. I try to remind him as often as I can but,” she shrugs, “I’m not the one who’s by his side the whole time.”

-x-

Later on that evening, with Fitz’s mum in bed, Jemma and Fitz are downstairs watching a movie. There’s a big bag of popcorn on the coffee table and a deep-fried mars bar Fitz had insisted Jemma try ( _It’s honestly not so bad – just think of it as a thing on its own rather than as a mars bar)_. They’re cosy and comfortable and they’re normal, Jemma thinks (Normal: Jemma leaning on Fitz’s shoulder while watching a movie – both draped in a blanket). This is her best friend in the whole world who had a dad that used him as a verbal punch bag before leaving. She needs him to know that she thinks he’s one of the smartest people that she’s ever met and that she thinks his love of monkeys is adorable and that she’s so glad she’s been paired with him right from the start because, honestly, she can’t imagine her life without him.

“Fitz?”

“Hm?” He breaks his eyes away from the TV to look at her.

“I… I just want you to know that…” She trails off, changing what she was going to say. “That I’m really glad we aced that project on cell molecular regeneration we just completed.”

He gives her a strange look. “Em, yeah, I’m pretty sure you squealing and jumping up and down when we got our grade gave it away.”

“Yes, yes I know,” she hurries to explain. “Except I don’t think I ever told you properly and I also think that I never told you how smart your idea was about the different carbon isotopes we used. I really should have told you, but I didn’t but just to let you know now that it was an extremely smart idea.”

He gives her another strange look, but this time it’s also affectionate and she sees the little boy his mum was talking about underneath. “Thanks, Jemma,” he says shyly. “I do have them sometimes, you know.”

“Yes,” she says, snuggling back into his shoulder and pulling the blanket back around them. “I do know.”

Then, a few seconds later.

“I just wanted to let you know too.”


End file.
